Biblio

Datasheets of different commercially available integrated sensors for vector measurements of magnetic fields provide typical specifications, such as measurement range, sampling rate, resolution, and noise. Other characteristics of interest, such as linearity, cross-sensitivity, remanent magnetization, and drifts over temperature, are mostly missing. This letter presents testing results of those characteristics of integrated three-dimensional (3-D) sensors working with different sensor principles and technologies in a reproducible measuring process. The sensors are exposed to temperatures from -20 °C to 80 °C and are cycled in hysteresis loops in fields up to 2.5 mT. For applying high-accuracy magnetic fields, a calibrated 3-D Helmholtz coil setup is used. Commercially available integrated 3-D magnetic field sensors are put in operation on a printed circuit board using nonmagnetic passive components. All sensors are configured for best measurement accuracy according to their data-sheets. The results show that sensors based on anisotropic magnetoresistance have high accuracy and low offsets yet also a high degree of nonlinearity. Hall-based sensors show good linearity but also high cross-sensitivity. A magnetic remanence appears for Hall-based sensors with integrated magnetic concentrators as well as for sensors using anisotropic magnetoresistance. Nearly all sensors show remaining drifts over temperature regarding offset and sensitivity up to several percentages.

Back-end-of-line compatible integration of NdFeB-based micro magnets onto 8 inch Si substrates is presented. Substrate conditioning procedures to enable further processing in a cleanroom environment are discussed. It is shown that permanent magnetic structures with lateral dimensions between 25μm and 2000μm and a depth up to 500μm can be fabricated reliably and reproducibly with a remanent magnetization of 340mT at a standard deviation as low as 5% over the substrate. To illustrate post-processing capabilities, the fabrication of micro magnet arrangements embedded in silicon frames is described.

Having significant role in the storing, delivering and conversion of the energy, the permanent magnets are key elements in the actual technology. In many applications, the gap between ferrites and rare earths (RE) based sintered permanent magnets is nowadays filled by RE bonded magnets, used in more applications, below their magnetic performances. Therewith, the recent trends in the RE market concerning their scarcity, impose EU to consider alternative magnets (without RE) to fill such gap. The paper presents the chemical synthesis of the exchange coupled SrFe12O19/CoFe2O4 nanocomposites, based on nanoferrites. The appropriate annealing leads to the increasing of the main magnetic characteristics, saturation magnetization MS and intrinsic coercivity Hc, in the range of 49 - 53 emu/g, respectively 126.5 - 306 kA/m. The value reached for the ratio between remanent magnetization and saturation magnetization is higher than 0.5, fact that proved that between the two magnetic phases occurred exchange interaction.